The First Lady of Radio Read online

  The First Lady of Radio

  ALSO BY STEPHEN DRURY SMITH

  After the Fall: New Yorkers Remember

  September 2001 and the Years That Followed

  (co-edited with Mary Marshall Clark, Peter Bearman, and Catherine Ellis)

  Say It Loud! Great Speeches on Civil Rights and African American Identity

  (co-edited with Catherine Ellis)

  Say It Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches

  (co-edited with Catherine Ellis)

  © 2014 by Stephen Drury Smith

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to: Permissions Department, The New Press, 120 Wall Street, 31st floor, New York, NY 10005.

  Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2014

  Distributed by Perseus Distribution

  ISBN 978-1-62097-049-2 (e-book)

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  For Kate

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  A Note on the Transcripts

  Foreword by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Introduction

  1.“The Girl of Today”

  2.“Woman’s Career vs. Woman’s Home”

  3.“A Mother’s Responsibility as a Citizen”

  4.“Concluding Broadcast”

  5.“Negro Education”

  6.“When Will a Woman Become President of the U.S.?”

  7.“Shall a Woman Be Herself?”

  8.“A Day in the White House”

  9.“Peace Through Education”

  10.“World Court Broadcast”

  11.“Making the Wheels Go ’Round in the White House”

  12.“Keeping House on a Budget in the White House”

  13.“What It Means to Be the Wife of the President”

  14.“Education of a Daughter for the Twentieth Century”

  15.“Problems of Working Women”

  16.“Life in a Tenement”

  17.“Eleanor Roosevelt Interviewed on the Causes and Cures of War”

  18.“Domestic Workers and Government Housing”

  19.“Questions About the White House”

  20.“Democracy”

  21.“Political Conventions and Campaign Trips”

  22.“Planning for War and Postwar Periods”

  23.“Peace, Democracy, and Ideals”

  24.“Address to the Democratic National Convention”

  25.“Shall We Arm Merchant Ships?”

  26.“Freedom of Speech”

  27.“Propaganda”

  28.“Isolationists”

  29.“Pearl Harbor Attack”

  30.“Civilian Defense”

  31.“Preparedness for War”

  32.“Enemy Aliens and Women in War Work”

  33.“Answering Her Critics”

  34.“Broadcast from Liverpool”

  35.“Wartime Conditions in Great Britain”

  36.“D-Day Message”

  37.“V-E Day Radio Message”

  38.“V-J Day Radio Message”

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Many people have supported the public radio documentary project that also gave rise to this anthology. I want to thank my colleagues at American Public Media™ and its documentary unit, American RadioWorks®. I am indebted to the staffs at several archives, including the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland, and the Special Collections department of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries. For help with the manuscript, I am grateful to historians Maurine Beasley and Brian Horrigan, and intern Minna Zhou.

  A Note on the Transcripts

  The transcripts for this book were primarily drawn from typewritten radio scripts in the Eleanor Roosevelt papers collection at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York. Many of the transcripts are reproduced virtually verbatim, with small changes to include handwritten revisions or to make punctuation meant for the ear work better for the eye. Whenever possible, the archival scripts have been checked against recordings of the broadcasts to ensure accuracy. But recordings for many of the programs were never made or did not survive. Scripts often got changed at the last minute and ER was also known to extemporize on occasion. In some instances an authoritative, post-broadcast transcript was produced by either the network or the sponsoring ad agency.

  A few of the transcripts have been edited to eliminate tangential material. A few words have been added in brackets to provide context. This anthology is not intended to be a mechanical reproduction of the original scripts. Most of the scripts can be found in the Speech and Article File of ER’s papers at the FDR Library.

  Where possible, I have included some of the original advertising copy, announcer continuity, and musical cues in the first selection from a given commercial series. This is meant to provide a richer sense of how the radio broadcast sounded.

  Foreword

  As we contemplate the global challenges and conservative backlash against all liberal policies, Eleanor Roosevelt emerges ever more clearly as the Voice of the Century. She was a steadfast progressive, an anti-racist visionary for democracy—which she defined as political and economic opportunity with equal justice for all. In her columns, articles, and broadcasts, ER was specific: to achieve democracy, America required movements for change which would insure decent housing, adequate health care, excellent education for all—across all differences and divides, women and men in equal measure.

  Since the issues she addressed as First Lady with her unique and inspiring vision are once again the most urgent issues of our time, Stephen Drury Smith’s splendid collection of Eleanor Roosevelt’s radio transcripts are important and generative. Independent and bold, even competitive, ER was in part FDR’s political partner. She sought to enhance her husband’s efforts, and build support for his best visions. When they disagreed and she sought to move him further, she wrote about or broadcast alternatives. As the First Lady of Radio, ER was full of surprises. She welcomed controversy, told secrets, revealed intimacies, and was generally more blunt than reserved. She had flair and a grand sense of humor, shared astonishing details of White House life, interviewed activists and workers, spoke clearly about refugees and race.

  Justice Thurgood Marshall called her “Lady Big Heart” because of her commitment to civil rights over many decades. Indeed, her first dramatic speech for universal quality education without discrimination—addressed to educators who had just condemned segregation at the National Conference on Fundamental Problems in the Education of Negroes in Washington on May 11, 1934—is included in this volume.

  Delighted by the resolution, which called for a New Deal for all children and had passed unanimously, ER strode upon the stage to confirm her support: “I noticed in the papers this morning the figures given of the cost in certain states per capita for the education of a colored child and of a white child, and I cou
ld not help but think . . . how stupid we are.” Since democracy depends above all on an educated citizenry, a literate, informed, and concerned people, “we should really bend our energies . . . to giving to children the opportunity to develop their gifts . . . to the best that is in them.” Excellent education was, for ER, a matter of national preservation:

  To deny any part of a population the opportunities for more enjoyment in life, for higher aspirations, is a menace to the nation as a whole. There has been too much concentrating wealth, and even if it means that some of us have got to learn to be a little more unselfish . . . we must realize that it will profit us all in the long run. . . . I think the day of selfishness is over; the day of really working together has come, and we must learn to work together, all of us, regardless of race or creed or color; we must wipe out, wherever we find it, any feeling . . . of intolerance, of belief that any one group can go ahead alone. We go ahead together or we go down together.

  Community responsibility to ensure excellent education, decent affordable housing with gardens and playgrounds, and quality health care for all remained ER’s abiding themes, which were intensified and internationalized during the war. They defined democracy and the need to build a world peace movement—issues she addressed in all her broadcasts. She rejected greed and bigotry, fear and pettiness, as she pursued a new understanding to build a future of domestic amity and world peace. While bombs exploded, homes were rendered rubble, international borders became meaningless, and limitations regarding women’s work and responsibilities ended. As public schools close across the nation and hard-won victories for women’s health rights and citizen voting rights are canceled, ER’s words resound with urgency. With this amazing collection, we have the path to ER’s healing vision: our survival depends on war’s end. We must learn to respect, honor, even to love each other, and recognize that our human family inhabits one connected community—dedicated to liberty, justice, and human rights.

  Stephen Smith’s comprehensive collection of Eleanor Roosevelt’s broadcasts is perfectly timed to stir activists everywhere to continue the struggle for decency and survival—and to finally achieve ER’s legacy of human rights for all.

  —Blanche Wiesen Cook

  July 2014

  Eleanor Roosevelt broadcasts a message to the American people in 1942 (courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum).

  Introduction

  Sunday at the White House began much like any other. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt described it as a “quiet” morning, although the staff was preparing for a luncheon of thirty guests, including close friends, visiting relatives, and government officials. President Franklin D. Roosevelt would take lunch privately in his study with his most trusted adviser, Harry Hopkins. Tensions had been steadily mounting between the United States and the increasingly belligerent Japanese. The president had been up late the night before, drafting a message to the Japanese emperor. So on Sunday, FDR was enjoying a few moments of private relaxation with Hopkins, his Scotty dog, Fala, and his stamp collection. ER was “disappointed but not surprised” that her husband passed on the big luncheon crowd.1

  It was December 7, 1941.

  At 1:47 p.m., Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox telephoned the president with news that Japanese airplanes had attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. The attack would kill more than 2,400 military personnel and civilians and strike a heavy blow on the US Pacific Fleet. Before long, the White House corridors filled with military officials and political aides. ER overheard the news and said good-bye to her guests. FDR was clearly occupied, so ER spent the afternoon in her sitting room. She worked on correspondence, keeping an ear cocked to the hallway traffic coming and going from the president’s study. She also revised her script.

  As it happened, ER was scheduled to make her regular fifteen-minute national radio appearance that evening. The first lady’s program was called Over Our Coffee Cups, airing on 122 stations of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and sponsored by the Pan-American Coffee Bureau, an organization representing seven Latin American coffee-growing countries. The program was one in a series of commercially sponsored prime-time radio shows that ER hosted while she was first lady. On that Sunday afternoon, the president dictated to his secretary the “date which will live in infamy” speech he would deliver to Congress and on national radio the next day. The first lady was across the hall rewriting her upcoming broadcast.

  At 6:45 p.m. on her live broadcast, in her calm, measured voice, ER explained that the president was meeting with his cabinet and members of Congress and had spent the afternoon conferring with diplomatic and military officials. She explained that Congress would have a full report on the situation the next morning. Then, as she often did, ER cast herself as the radio listeners’ fellow citizen, rather than the first lady. “We, the people, are already prepared for action. For months now the knowledge that something of this kind might happen has been hanging over our heads,” she said. “That is all over now and there is no more uncertainty. We know what we have to face and know that we are ready to face it.” Then Mrs. Roosevelt’s words grew more personal.

  Speaking to the women of the country, she noted that she had a son on a Navy destroyer somewhere at sea. “For all I know he may be on his way to the Pacific,” she said. Two other Roosevelt children lived in cities on the Pacific coast and could be vulnerable to Japanese attack. ER said she understood the anxiety women would suffer over loved ones in the service or living in danger zones. But she called on American women to go about their daily business, determined to press on. “We are the free and unconquerable people of the United States of America,” she said. Then ER spoke briefly to America’s young people. A great opportunity to serve their country lay ahead, she told them: “I have faith in you! Just as though I were standing on a rock and that rock is my faith in my fellow citizens.” With that, the first lady moved on to the previously scheduled theme of the program, Army morale, and an interview with a soldier from Fort Dix.2

  It was a remarkable broadcast at a critical moment in the nation’s history. With America under attack, the public heard first not from their president but from his wife. By going on with the show, ER could ask the American people to carry on as well. And she was careful to keep her proper place in the feminine sphere by addressing the nation’s women and young people. On an evening when millions of Americans were gathering by the radio for news, it was an unprecedented moment for a first lady.

  Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt had adopted radio as a communication tool when the medium was so new no one was certain what place it would find in American culture. In 1932, the year FDR was first elected president, some 65 percent of American households owned a radio. The two primary broadcasting companies, NBC and CBS, were well established. Surveys found that listeners in the 1930s spent an average of more than four hours a day listening to radio broadcasts. By 1940, radios were in 81 percent of American households.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt was a consummate broadcaster, but ER was the radio professional. During her years in the White House, ER made some three hundred radio appearances, about the same number as her husband. But for dozens of those broadcasts she got paid handsome talent fees by advertisers. Her shows were sponsored by the makers of cold cream, mattresses, coffee, typewriters, building materials, and beauty soap. It was a novel and controversial career for a president’s wife. ER was criticized for commercializing her White House role and for meddling in public affairs best left to her husband. But ER was also praised for making thoughtful observations on world events, for helping unify the nation during the Depression and World War II, and for bringing Americans into more intimate contact with the White House and the presidential family.

  In 1932, before FDR took office, ER declared that it was “impossible for husband and wife both to have political careers.”3 She denied having any particular political influence on the future president. But in ways both subtle and direct, ER’s radio programs and other media work
did far more than reflect her personal views. She helped publicize FDR’s New Deal. She alerted the nation to the growing threat of world war. Once the fighting started, ER helped rally the home front. She battled her husband’s critics. At the same time, her radio work challenged conventional restrictions on women as broadcasters and as political professionals. “ER set a new pace, new goals, a new understanding of what was possible and acceptable for women to achieve,” historian Blanche Wiesen Cook writes.4 ER did so in a medium, radio, that historians have argued had an “incalculable impact” on American life and politics, but that scholars and intellectuals have tended to ignore.5

  Radio was just one of the bully pulpits ER used to influence public opinion. Her column, “My Day,” was syndicated in ninety newspapers at its peak. She traveled extensively around the country and the world. Although these efforts have been widely noted by historians, far less has been said about ER at the radio microphone. In fact, few contemporary listeners have ever heard these programs.

  ER was a first lady of firsts. She was the first president’s wife to fly in an airplane. She was the first to testify before Congress. She was the first to hold a government job, to address a national political convention. ER’s independence and determination—including her hours before the radio mike—fueled scalding criticism from those who deplored her views, disliked her voice, or thought a proper first lady should confine herself to managing domestic life in the White House. Toward the end of her first year as first lady, Time magazine suggested that ER was using the executive mansion “less as a home than as a base of operations.” It reported on her exhaustive daily schedule, her seemingly boundless energy, and “her countless crusades.”6 A writer for Good Housekeeping magazine said she initially thought ER’s commercial work “was not only bad judgment and bad taste but bad ethics as well.”7 Though the writer came to admire ER, the impulse was clear: first ladies, however accomplished, were expected to maintain a kind of dignified obscurity.